This invention relates to a rotary loading apparatus and is particularly directed to such an apparatus having means rotating past a receiving station at one speed or velocity for receiving a load, rotating to another station and transferring the article to a receiving means while rotating at a second different velocity.
In the development of automatic material and article handling, high speed conveying and sorting mechanisms have been developed to transfer loads between various stations which may be broadly identified as a loading station and unloading stations.
The particular transfer or sorting mechanism might receive articles from a plurality of sources and discharge them at any one or more of a plurality of different unloading stations under the control of a suitable interlocking memory unit. A particularly satisfactorily sorter mechanism with automatic unloading means is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,034,665 which employs a double tilting tray for each load which is selectively tilted to one side or the other to discharge the load at a correspondingly located receiving station. A highly improved tilting tray system is disclosed in the copending application entitled CONVEYING APPARATUS INCLUDING TILTING SUPPORT STRUCTURES of Richard L. Speaker et al, filed Apr. 10, 1972 and bearing Ser. No. 242,330 and assigned to the same assignee as this application. This unit employs a pair of tray halves individually and separately pivotally mounted to form a V-shaped support with the appropriate side released to discharge the article.
In all such high speed sorting or conveying mechanisms various efforts have been made to increase the speed of travel to more rapidly process the article. However, the speed of the sorting or conveying mechanism must of course be interrelated to and is constrained by the ability to properly load and unload the conveying mechanism. Various high speed loading devices have been disclosed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,140,771 discloses a high speed induction means having a special transfer element at the terminal end for rapidly moving of the load onto a conveyor such as the tilting tray sorter discussed above. Although such induction units have been satisfactorily employed, there is a need for an induction loading device which will receive a load at a relatively slow speed to permit the necessary encoding of the sorter mechanism and then rapidly transfer the load onto the high speed sorter mechanism. It is desirable to place the load directly onto the central portion of the sorter tray or other load support to provide optimum loading. This is particularly desirable in connection with the V-shaped tray support unit which defines a natural central location means for the load structure.